Posted by
Bill Crawford on Sunday, June 20, 2010 9:26:43 PM
I tried to give myself some time here to absorb this thing, and not run with my first reactions. I should have known better.
Obama is up against it in the Gulf. It is going to get worse for us (and him) before it gets better. Let me lead off by saying that he has picked a bad time to develop a soft spot for golf. That particular issue doesn't rankle me at all, I realize that the Presidency is something that functions 24/7, vacation, tee time or Oval Office workday. But many of his supporters are placing him in the same basket as the BP Chairman going to a yacht race while they are working overtime cleaning up in the Gulf area.
But I digress. As always, listening to Obama the economy major is no day at the beach. I grew up to be a follower of Milton Friedman. This is a school that drills you in the head with Aristotle's "A is A" dictum: theory must be grounded in reality. Anybody who has learned economics at the University of Chicago will tell you how they were beat on the head with this constantly. That sounds like a wonderful theory there. Show me an example of how it worked. If you don't find a way to ground it in reality, it probably isn't.
So if you start prattling on about leaving the evil world of fossil fuels and moving on into the new green job nirvana, you wouldn't mind answering a few silly questions, would you? How on earth are the Chinese and the thousands of workers and citizens they are killing with open strip mining and dirty coal plants a shining example of the new green economy? How are we supposed to capitalize an economy based on new energy sources, when the biggest obstacle is the level of technology they still lack? How is California going to do anything but pour tax money down the drain on public car charging stations when the market for the cars isn't there yet, and those who have them have to leave them there for well over an hour every time to replenish? How craven is it to push the purchase of electric cars with a tax subsidy, when the tax money has to come from us, and our debt is going viral?
Naaah, forget that. Here is where Obama the willfully ignorant (economics) morphs into Obama the politically dense: how is it that nobody around you who prepared that speech seemed to notice that the only thing you could talk about on the subject of the cleanup that everybody is getting migraines over is A) extorting money from BP for damages and B) your word that you won't rest until the cleanup is finished? Are you nuts? None of your pollsters are picking this up?
Enjoy the summer, Mr. President. The slick is still spreading, and only one person in this room campaigned the notion that his election would "heal the planet" and "lower the seas". You set the expectations. Live with it.
Don't blame me, folks. This is between the President and his voters. I don't expect the President to have all the answers. His supporters do, and Obama is twisting in hell for it. His detractors don't expect more than I do, and are simply giving him comeuppance.
This is an environmental disaster, and Obama's supporters live with two great subjects of the heart: abortion and the environment. There is no way of talking out of this for him. He needs a technological miracle. For the sake of the Gulf, I hope he gets one.